Samhain

First off, happy birthday again to our Alice.  Now that you're a proper grown up you get to smoke a pipe, wear tweed and tut at young people hanging around bus stops.  You've certainly blossomed into a fine young woman since that day, many, many years ago when we found you behind some bins and decided to take you in and teach you the ways of mankind.

Not much going on this week.  Well, there has been stuff going on, but I've been on the periphery, mainly.  Midweek was like the last days of Rome.  People were playing a game called Amy Winehands, wherin you tape a couple of bottles of wine (and the wine in question was real $2 a bottle tramp juice that could, if needed, be used to sterilise wounds) to your hands and are not allowed to take them off before they're empty.  A number of people downed both within half an hour.  The lesson I subsequently drew from this is that just because you can drink booze, it doesn't necessarily follow that you can hold it.  It got fairly messy.  There may be pictures floating round.  If you look hard you might be able to see me in the background, sipping from a mug and looking vaguely dissaproving.  Went to bed early, but was kept up  by one of my roomates pleading with the girl who had had to put him to bed to perform certain favours for him.  This went on (unsuccessfully) for several hours in a variety of languages.  With several days hindsight, i'm vaguely impressed by his persistence, but at the time my thoughts tended to the more *ahem* uncharitable.

There was a big Halloween do on a boat in the harbour.  Unfortunately work related circumstances conspired against me, meaning I couldn't go.  Bob - who could -  got his Blue Peter on and constructed a quite nifty Sweeney Todd costume, using approximately fifty cardboard boxes to create two small, bouncer friendly, cut throat razors.

Due to my aversion to blindness, I had to go to the opticians at the end of the week.  This was something I was hoping to avoid during my stay, but due to the hostel's rather over zealous approach to tidying, which involves throwing out a perfectly good pair of spectacles that I left in the bathroom, it's something of a necessity.  Total trip ended up costing me in the region of 300 bucks.  I'm hoping that I should be okay for the rest of the trip, but I'm guessing, giving my propensity towards carelessness, that I'll be back in a couple of months. 

Twice last week I found myself sitting opposite the same crazy person on the train from work.  He was loudly talking to himself about tying someone up and bleeding them to death.  I may have spent too long in the big city, as I primarily found this annoying rather than disturbing.    Currently drawing and reading a lot.  Rereading Wuthering Heights or, as I like to call it, Grumpy Yorkshire Buggers, Up a Hill.   

Sorry that this has mainly dealt with the going ons of other people.  I've been boring.  Next week I shall fight a dinosaur and - more importantly - win.

Love and fishes

Dave Denton

Splishy Splashy Splish

It's late and I am being pestered by Bob to play the game and blog.  While I'm perfectly fine with this in theory, I'm finding it hard to find something to write about.  This is mainly because I seem to have settled into a bit of a routine of late.  I get up, go to work, return to the hostel, maybe go out for a quick drink, watch a film and then go to bed.  Rinse and repeat.  While this is far from a trying existence, it has got a bit same old, same old.  The solution for this torpor is to try new things; exciting things; shiny things; Australian things.

Luckily we do know Australians, so we've been knocking around with Erin and her associates this weekend.  Yesterday we went to New Town.  Ironically, despite the name, the place is slightly worn looking and full of thrift shops.  It was excellent, far more chilled out than the cross, with a nice bohemian vibe to it.  Definitely intend to go back at some point. 

Today Erin and her mate Tia took us to Coogee beach.  Bob (still dressed in trousers, T-shirt and shoes) took one look at the water, declared himself "not a beach person" and plonked himself on a towel.  While I would hesitate to describe myself as a beach person, I figured when in Rome and proceeded to take on the sea with all the convincing vigour of an anaemic chess player throwing down against Giant Haystacks.  I can now tell you that, despite what it says in all the brochures, the Pacific is bloody cold.  Also, being hit in the face by a ten foot wave hurts a bit.  It was also very enjoyable.  Bob, after some token grumbling, eventually decided to give it a go.  After nearly drowning he decided that he "wasn't a beach person" and went back to sit on the beach.  A side effect of the dangerous amount of fresh air I've been receiving is that I'm now a fetching shade of pink. This is the English way.

A spider the size of small cat came and watched the rugby final with us.  James, the hostel manager, tried to kill it with a spear and a flaming torch, but in doing so he dislodged it from the ceiling and it ran off flipping us the bird and saying rude things about our collective mums.  If I find it I will exact my revenge (nobody says shit about me mam), but if it gets me first, remember that I love and miss you all.

Love and Fishes

Dave Denton

Heffalump

As way of making up up for the late post, here's a poem what I wrote at work:

The elephant is a curious bird

It flies from tree to tree

It builds it's nest from sugar lumps

And has pickled buns for tea

But fear the vengeful pachyderm

For if you should get his goat

He'll grab you with his trunkleton

And shove you down his throat

I must say, it's a fucking miracle that I haven't been given a book deal yet.

Love and Fishes

Dave Denton

Got Round to It Eventually

Apologies for the lack of a Sunday update.  I'll try harder in the future.

    Had a do at work on Monday.  In the end I opted to forgo the tie.  It was a bit of a mixed evening.  Everybody was really canny and I finally found out what a Chicken Schnitzel Parmagiana is (rather disappointingly it's just parmo), but for some reason that I've still not identified beyond my traditional discomfort with large groups of strangers, I regressed a bit back into my teenage self.  Thankfully this didn't mean my skin broke out and I thought about girl's botttoms constantly, but it did mean I found that I couldn't bring myself to make any other sound except a few squeaks and the occasional mumble.  My normal recourse in this situation would be to take advantage of the limitless bar tab that the company had laid on, but I'm big enough and ugly enough to know that often does more harm than good and, besides, I was back in work the next day.

    My sterling social performance put me in a bit of a funny mood for the first half of the week.  Wont say I felt homesick.  I don't particularly miss England, only a certain select group of English men and women.  Midweek I went into the corner had a quiet word with myself and rallied somewhat.   Actually did some writing on Friday, this despite looking back through the most recent chapters of the Great British Novel earlier and being shocked how crap it is.

    I've been bouncing round the rooms of the hostel a bit.  Summer's coming and as such the Blue Parrot's taking a lot of bookings and, as I'm the living embodiment of forward thinking, I neglected to book my old room sufficiently in advance.  It's been nice seeing how the other half live.  In room four I only had to share with five other people and room eight has it's own loo.  Swish.  I thought about sending the plebs in room seven a postcard, but I'll probably be back there before it reached them.

    Sunday was meant to be a lazy day, but I ended going for a walk through the botanic gardens and to the Rocks with Aurore, who is a happy bunny now she's found a waitressing job that doesn't entail dressing as a ballerina and dealing with her boss (who as mentioned in a previous post, sounds like a massive, massive wanker).  When we passed the Opera House, we found that they were organising free tours of the opera house.  Not sure about the preponderance of concrete in the atrium, but the concert halls themselves are really nice and I can now say that I've been on stage at a world renowned concert venue (which I have, to the point that the joke has now been run into the ground).  Afterwards we went to a pattiserie, drank (admittedly slightly shite) red wine and ate (actually very nice) cakes.   It was nice, at least to the point where it made me think that the French might be onto something with the whole cafe culture thing.  As we walked back we noticed a huge fire at one of the places we'd been to earlier.  I swear it was nothing to do with us.

    With Korbi managing to finally wrangle a labouring position yesterday, the last of the long term residents of the hospital now appear to be gainfully employed.  Bob is being giving a different job role ever few days and has been promoted and demoted around five times this week.  We're both getting slightly itchy feet, but for the moment Sydney's a good place to be.

Love and Fishes

Dave Denton

P.S.  My old housemate, Mike Foster, has recently had a short story published.  You should read it.  Which you can, along with more of his work, at http://worksofgalgavias.blogspot.com

Hippy Bathday

What did you get for your birthday?  I was hoping for a new train set and a box of colouring pencils.  What I got instead was a bottle of gin and a lap dance off a transvestite.  You may think I'm joking.  I assure you I'm not.

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10150844080810461

Maybe this is normal.  When I was younger I always thought as I got older birthdays would involve wine, cheese, grapes and maybe a bit of Michael Bolton.  This has so far not proved to be the case.  Maybe I'm hanging round with the wrong crowd.

Turning 29 was less traumatic than I feared.  I'm as little older, a little wiser, my eyebrows are a little bushier and I seem further than ever away from any sort of responsibility.  I'm no better at any of the stuff that I thought I'd have mastered by now (chatting up women, fixing a tap, giving even the slightest shit about cars), while I've become reasonably adept at things that only have a passing relationship with practicality (actor filmographies, doodling, sausage casserole).  Ms Christina Dior's attentions were retaliation for revealing Bob's real age to the rest of the hostel.  This wasn't the result of any malicious intent on my part, but an unfortunate side effect of the fact that, unlike him, I had no qualms about revealing my own age and it's public knowledge that I'm a day younger than him.

Despite his thirst for revenge, Bob also managed to enjoy his own birthday without breaking into tears, shaking his fists at the stars and cursing an absent God for inflicting him with this cruel mortality.  The evenings celebrations were cut somewhat short when I was refused entry to the next bar.  This had less to do with my boyish looks and more to do with the fact that Sydney bouncers are absolute cocks.  I have never had as much trouble getting into places as I've had here.  Normally I'd take it personally, but almost everybody seems to have experienced the same difficulties at least once.  This includes Bob, who when asked how many drinks he'd had, replied - truthfully - none and was turned away for being wasted.  Korbi, a German lad who has just completed his RSA (Responsible Service of Alcohol - maybe), explained that staff are trained to ask everybody they have even the slightest suspicion about how many drinks they've had.  If the answer is anything higher than two and the venue is anywhere other than your hostel/hotel/home, then your liable to be sent packing.  The only loophole I can see is if you're blonde and have a cute arse.  Unfortunately, I'm not dyeing my hair for anyone, so I'm hoping this is primarily a Sydneyside thing.

A quick round up of other news: the French contingent have been surprisingly gracious about knocking England out the world cup - though they're both girls and I suspect they don't really care.  Beginning to suffer Rugby fatigue now, but hope the Welsh do well.  Bought a hat.  Ate Mexican food for the first time.  Bob lost his lap top cable, swore.  Bob found his laptop cable.  Repeatedly tried to ring home, without luck.  Saw a man covered in pigeons.

Got to go out for a works night out tomorrow.  I shall wear a tie and be sociable.

Love and Fishes

Dave

Bridges, Bridges, Rickety Old Things.

Aren't bridges brilliant?  If I made a list of my very favouritest kind of architecture I would rank it right at the very top (Yes, even ahead of Victorian follies).  I suspect this is because they're public in the truest sense of the word. The London Shard may be the well be the biggest skyscraper in all of Europetown when it's finished, but only about 0.0000001 percent of the population are ever going to use it, in which case it becomes like a gigantic middle finger, forever reminding you that - hah, hah - you're poor and forever destined to remain so.  When I visited Rome, what I took away from the Vatican was that, yes, the built environment was spectacular, awe inspiring, insert-adjective-here-to-suggest mintitude, but it was of an arrogant, bullying, "what do you you mean you don't have faith, ain't you seen the size of this fucking statue" kind  Bridges, by contrast, are constructs that are used by the entire population; rich, poor, young, old, sharks, jets.  Both symbolically and practically they perform a linking function that I find appealing and even the most basic is enduring proof that, despite all evidence to the contrary, humanity can be capable of great things when it pulls its finger out of its bumhole.

Sydney, of course, has a hell of a bridge and it's my daily commute over it that has inspired the above meandering.  Disappointingly, you can't really see much of the harbour from the train line, but I get a great view of the structure of the bridge itself, which like it's diddy cousin in Newcastle stands as a monument to the busy ingenuity that came easy to the western world in the hundred years between 1850 and the second world war, which now seems to be lost.  The job that lies at the end of the commute (approx 12 miles from the hostel; Sydney sprawls like a Mackem lass after a night on the alcopops) is less gratifying, but I appear to be getting a hang of it and I reckon I'll be okay till Christmas.

The hostel in general has moved onto a work footing.  Bob continues to complain that he has to work, but was mollified that he is able to dine for free in the swanky canteen downstairs (his lunch on Monday was, and I quote: "three steaks, vindaloo and then ice cream).  The rest of the hostel all seem to be searching for work with varying levels of success.  One of the trio of Brum Lads we've got staying here, Tom, managed to secure a position as a butcher's counter assistant, but left after a day as his new employer was "a massive, massive wanker."  Somebody else took up the now vacant post and promptly left after a day because his new employer was "a massive, massive wanker."  Another of the brummies, Ollie, had an interview this morning, and although he turned up on time for it his potential employer didn't, as it's a bank holiday here at the mo.  The difficulty in finding work in Sydney is prompting a number of people to move on.  A lad named Niko (Finnish) is off to Perth Wednesday, despite having what I would have assumed was the exceptionally desirable skills of an electrician.  He may be followed shortly by a guy named Korbi (German), who is concerned that he's hemorrhaging money, Sydney not being exactly cheap.  Not everyone is having such difficulties though.  Aurore and Laury (both French) are holding down two and three positions respectively (at the hostel, a local restaurant, with Laury pulling weekend shifts at a chocolate factory), although listening to Aurore talk about her boss at the restaurant, it does sound like he might be a massive, massive wanker.

All this activity means that, despite being fairly full, the hostel's been much quieter recently.  There was an outing to a rather swish place called The Ivy in the CBD the other day in order to celebrate the long weekend.  The place had free drinks, free food and a plentitude of beautiful people living it up.  It was brilliant.  Apparently.  I wouldn't know.  Because I'm a daft twat I left my passport at the hostel and couldn't get in.  I instead went back and watched the Rugby.

It's mine and Bob's birthday this week.  I'm unsure whether I want to do anything to mark it.  I'll let you know what happens.  Sorry about the irrelevant rambling at the start.  It's what I do.

Love and Fishes

Dave

P.S The post title comes from a poem that a childhood friend wrote.  It went as follows:

Bridges, bridges

Rickety old things

I hate bridges

He was an odd child.